The field of the invention relates to systems and methods for manipulating devices, such as in vivo control of implanted devices, and, in particular, relates to systems and methods for using magnetic resonance systems to manipulate devices.
Medical implants are a multi-billion dollar industry, spanning the gamut from bone screws to pacemakers. Generally, medical implants are positioned, deployed, or otherwise implanted in a patient as part of a surgical procedure. Unfortunately, whether to reposition a bone screw or replace a power source of a pacemaker, subsequent interventional or surgical procedures are often associated with many medical implants. This is particularly true for medical implants utilized in therapeutic procedures. For example, in orthopedics, many implants may need to be adjusted or replaced as part of the progressing therapy, which typically requires some level of surgical or interventional procedure to adjust or replace the orthopedic implant. Of course, each surgical or interventional procedure undesirably subjects the patient to additional trauma and increases the general cost of the medical care.
Accordingly, substantial efforts have been made in an attempt to reduce the need to perform surgical or other interventions to adjust, configure, or otherwise maintain medical implants after initial deployment of the surgical implant. For example, substantial research and development has been made to enable wireless communications between implants and external processing systems. Additionally, substantial research and development has been made to facilitate external power and/or recharging of implants utilizing a power source, such as inductive power coupling and the like. Unfortunately, given the mechanical nature of medical implants, interventional or other surgical access to the device is often required, for example, to re-deploy a device that has moved from the original deployment position, to adjust a device to a next stage of a therapeutic cycle, or to otherwise maintain or correct the medical device.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a system and method for further reducing the need for interventional or other surgical access to an implanted medical device, particularly, to effectuate re-deployment of a device that has moved from the original deployment position, to adjust a device to a next stage of a therapeutic cycle, or to otherwise maintain or correct the medical device.